At the Rugby World Cup Opening Ceremony last year, the Rugby World Choir serenaded us with 'The Will to Climb'. This week, Sunday profiles the young adventurer who inspired that song, 13-year-old Christopher Harris.

Christopher started scrambling up walls at his father's indoor rock climbing centre at the age of five. Three years later, he was climbing Australia's highest mountain, Mt Kosciusko, encountering difficulties that would test hardened climbers, forced to seek shelter from a blizzard in a snow cave for many hours.

At the tender age of nine, he was one of the last to scale the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains near Sydney before they were closed to climbers. Last year at the age of 12, Christopher was awarded the Australian Geographic's Young Adventurer of the Year for being the world's youngest person to conquer the summit of Mt Cook in New Zealand. He was also praised as a source of inspiration to other young Australians.

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The height of Christopher's ambition seems to know no bounds. His most recent conquest is Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. His ultimate goal is to be the youngest person to climb the seven summits, the tallest mountain on each continent, including the highest in the world, Mt Everest, which he hopes to climb next year. "My ultimate goal is to be the youngest person in the world to climb the highest mountain on each continent. And also to be the youngest person in the world to climb Mt Everest."

(full story found here (http://sunday.ninemsn.com.au/sunday/feature_stories/article_1486.asp).)